Desperate employers in a tight job market are trying out a new kind of job interview: Automated phone calls in which a candidate answers a series of pre-recorded questions. What that means is that on these interviews, candidates effectively talk to themselves.

More and more companies, from healthcare and insurance companies to retailers, restaurants, and law firms, are implementing this type of automated interview, the Wall Street Journal reported. But it may not be ideal for candidates.

Jeremy Maffei told the Journal that his first automated interview for a digital marketing job in Florida caught him off guard.

"I blanked out," he told the Journal. When asked to answer a common job interview question about his greatest success and biggest failure, he couldn't figure out whether his answers "resonated," adding that it was "highly impersonal."

And as Business Insider's Rachel Premack previously reported, companies across the country are swapping out job title keywords like "associate" with ones like "evangelist," "rock star," and "ninja" in order to appeal to younger employees.